Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked From Worst to First

“There was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to. To fight the battles that we never could.”

That’s Nick Fury talking about the Avengers. But he could also be talking about the movie The Avengers and the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After ten years and 21 films, look at what became of this idea; bringing together all these remarkable people and seeing that, yes, they could be something more when they worked together, when their films were interwoven together until a giant meta-narrative. Ten years ago, the whole notion seemed crazy. An Iron Man movie? Who cares about Iron Man? Starring Robert Downey Jr.? Didn’t he have a drug problem? And then they’re going to make an Ant-Man movie? It’ll never work.

And yet here we sit a decade later and we can say, quite conclusively that it worked. Iron Man begat a sequel, plus The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers. Then six more movies. Then seven more after that. (Ant-Man showed up eventually, but it took a little while.) Ten years later, we’re nearing the end of Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Avengers: Endgame.What better time then to rank them all?

After watching Endgame and rewatching the 21 previous MCU movies, I have arrived at this guaranteed to be in-no-way controversial ranking, from the worst film Marvel has made so far (you know what it is) to the best. Again, these are my personal references. For more on what I think of each film, follow the links to each respective essay in my History of the Marvel Cinematic Universe column. Then come back in a few months when we do this all over again for Spider-Man: Far From Home.